Forthcoming legislation means Irish employers will be in the spotlight on both gender and parenting support fronts while leading employers are already tackling these as part of diversity, talent and good business sense.

In addition to fines for non-reporting, Irish employers will likely be influenced by the UK experience of media scrutiny of the Gender Pay Gap issue and be very aware of the potential reputational fall-out of being associated with negative data and its implications for recruitment and engagement.

According to a survey of 2,515 UK employees by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, nearly 61% of women would take an organisation’s gender pay gap into consideration when looking for a new job, suggesting that those with larger pay gaps could be missing out on talent.

Many factors contribute to the gender pay gap, but one fact is that men’s and women’s opportunities and salaries diverge from the childbearing years. We’ll be examining current practice and discussing what employers in Ireland could be doing to close the gap including a focus on addressing the key ‘motherhood’ and ‘good daughter’ penalties and supporting more gender-neutral models of parenting.

Take the opportunity to re-group now with peers on what actually works to fix the gap and the most effective ways of communicating your plans internally as well as externally as you set foundations for your reporting history in the public domain and ensure your first report tells a compelling and positive story.